Aspects of the Gents' Toilets - or The Unbearable Lightness of Peeing

Toilet paper

As most gents' toilets are only tended to once every five years, toilet paper is a rare sight. Typically you only notice its absence too late, after frantically running into the toilets to evacuate your bowels, then have to wait until nobody else is around and awkwardly shuffle to the next stall, a process you may have to repeat once or twice to find one with any bog roll left in it. Try keeping your morale up by whistling the theme from a classic war film whilst furtively flitting from bog to bog. This will make you feel like you're dodging Nazi guards whilst searching for secret weapon schematics. If your quest proves fruitless, you must hurry home in shame, getting odd looks from people who are wondering why there's a swarm of flies following you. If they ask questions, tell them that the flies made you their God Emperor. That'll throw them off the scent, so to speak.

Dryers

A technological marvel restricted exclusively to public toilets, nowhere else in the world will you find one of these machines. This is because they are as useful for drying your hands as a rubber band is for destroying an attack helicopter, and no sane person with access to towels would have one in their bathroom at home. The standard push-button model is fairly straightforward to use, but are a dying breed - most upscale shopping centre lavvies now use futuristic Minority Report style laser-guided dryers which you activate by gesticulating vaguely in their direction, causing them to emit a stream of lukewarm air for approximately two seconds before they turn off again. Regardless of how long you hold your hands under the dryer, you'll be leaving the gents wiping your still-clammy hands on the front of your jeans, which to the casual observer makes it appear that you never got to the toilet in time at all.

Urinals

Until recently these were unique to the gents', but now some high-tech ladies' rooms boast somewhat redundant female versions, presumably to give women the opportunity to take part in the previously male-dominated tradition of communal urination. Don't ask me how I know that.

The urinals should only be used when all of the enclosed stalls are occupied or if you don't mind exposing your genitalia in front of the large tattooed psychopath who is inevitably also using it. When making use of the urinal it is imperative you look directly forwards and don't let your gaze wander onto one of your neighbours' "Esteemed Members". Doing this will either get you a kicking or an undesired boyfriend. The trough-style urinals contain inexplicable bars of horrible-looking yellow soap called "urinal cakes". Their true purpose eludes me, as all they ever seem to be used for is a target in whimsical games of urinary marksmanship between intoxicated football supporters. Also known as urinal "pucks", for some damn reason. Maybe the toilet attendants play a disgusting version of ice hockey with them or something. Eurgh.

Prostitutes' phone numbers

Not content with filling every phonebooth in the world with calling cards and thus drawing suspicious glances upon any innocent gentleman who has to use one to make a legitimate call to an escort service, hookers also advertise in gents' toilets, with phone numbers hastily scrawled on the wall tiles in felt tip. Some are for males, but the great majority are for ladies of negotiable virtue, leading one to wonder if they themselves stealthily dash into the men's toilets to write them down. If so, do they claim they're transvestites when they inevitably get caught by the male patrons? And more importantly, why the hell am I devoting serious thought to this?

Sinks

Modern public toilet sinks appear to be designed by the same person who thought up the laser-guided hand dryers, as they're both gleefully impractical to use. To wash your hands, you are required to hold down the tap with one hand to make it release a pathetic trickle of water, so you have to juggle between hands, washing one at a time, because taking pressure off the tap for a microsecond immediately cuts the modest flow of water. This mechanism is probably one of the many employed to make public toilets "drunk proof", the idea being that you can't just turn the tap on and absent-mindedly leave it running until the entire building gets flooded. Be forewarned that the water itself will either be uselessly cold, or hot enough to melt a hole through RoboCop. A perfunctory soap-dispenser thing is usually included, which is for decoration only. Never actually use it, as it's either permanently empty or has been filled up with caustic lime by some anarchists.

Mirrors

Helpfully placed above the sinks, gents' toilet mirrors provide the clearest, most unflattering image of oneself since the Portrait of Dorian Gray. Looking into them will reveal and accentuate every single pock-mark, zit, solitary inch-long unshaved facial hair and acne scar that your horrific zombie face has to offer the world. As a result your ego will go on holiday and you'll spend several weeks lurching around like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, scowling with bitter envy at the walking examples of physical perfection which accost your vision at every step.

Gents

The gents' toilets would of course be incomplete without the "gents" themselves. The term "gentlemen's toilets" originated in the Victorian period, when toilets were wonders of steam-powered Imperial enterprise probably only used by eccentric aristocrats. The working classes, too humble to make use of them, instead relieved themselves into tin pails or out of open windows onto someone's top hat. But since that time the toilets became an equal-opportunity environment, accessible to anyone with a central nervous system. As such most are now the seedy domain of rentboys, muggers, psychopaths, advertising executives and other such forms of lowlife. Thus, the term "gentlemen" no longer really applies. However, there is hope for the future of the public convenience, in the guise of the railway station pay toilets. Which are glorious. By the simple method of charging people 20p if they want to spend a penny, most undesirables are filtered out of the toilet equation by the principle that they'll be put off the lavvies by having to pay, instead taking their business elsewhere. Unlike almost everything else relating to the British railway system, this appears to work perfectly, and thus station toilets are again exclusively the realm of the serious pro urinator.